[1] Born in London, England, in 1919, Spencer came to Canada in 1939 to visit relatives in British Columbia;[1] however, when the outbreak of World War II complicated his attempt to return home, he moved to Ottawa, Ontario, to take a job with the nascent National Film Board of Canada.
[2] Initially a cameraman, he later became a director and producer of NFB documentaries; by the 1960s, he was a key planning executive with the organization.
[1] The overall effect of his influence on Canadian film has been debated; most notably, it was at his behest that the government increased the Capital Cost Allowance tax credit from 60 per cent to 100 per cent in 1974, which unwittingly spawned the "tax shelter era" in Canadian film history.
[4] He left the CFDC in 1978,[4] and subsequently launched Film Finance Canada, a completion bonding firm.
[3] In 2003 he and Suzan Ayscough published the book Hollywood North: Creating the Canadian Motion Picture Industry, a memoir of his career with the NFB and the CFDC.